Sunday, 7 May 2017

In awe, I watched the
waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered
chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered
belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital
majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought... I must put a roof on
this toilet.
Les Dawson
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/lesdawson537829.html?src=t_jupiter

In awe, I watched the
waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered
chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered
belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital
majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought... I must put a roof on
this toilet.
Les Dawson
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/jupiter.html

In awe, I watched the
waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered
chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered
belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital
majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought... I must put a roof on
this toilet.
Les Dawson
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/jupiter.ht

The gibbous Moon was big and bright tonight, but my target for the evening was parked just under it, that being Jupiter.

For some days now I have wanted to capture the Great Red Spot, tonight was the perfect opportunity to do so.

At x166 magnification the Great Red Spot stood out easily.

It seems to be much more of an orange colour these days, plus it looks slightly bigger than last year.

The seeing was terrible tonight, so I had to make do with just the two major equatorial belts and the impressive as always GRS.

I had no idea how well they would work on such a bright object as Venus.

Being that all three are about the cheapest eyepieces you could buy I didn't have high expectations.

The 20mm and 12.5mm eyepieces returned lovely sharp views of the planet, with no false colour noted.

Next was the real test, the 4mm! Again a surprise, no false colour, no sparkly rainbow effects, just simply an enlarged sharp image of the waning crescent Venus.

To begin with I was dubious that any of the three eyepieces would deliver a clear image, probably the colour correction was helped by the focal length of Jason, being an f15 scope it is very forgiving of cheap eyepieces.

If I had used a telescope of f5 focal length I would probably have seen a lovely rainbow and fireworks display, I will have to try out these eyepieces on my f5 reflector one day soon.

After making a quick sketch of Venus it was time to pack up.

The north wind and the ever multiplying clouds told me to clear off and go back to the warmth of our kitchen..!

Sunday, 1 January 2017

It's that time of year when the clouds invariably fill the night skies, and all astronomy activity is put on hold!

My thoughts as usual turn to radio astronomy.

Astronomy has always been my main hobby, but it is followed closely by my interest in the radio spectrum, especially the amateur (ham) and radio astronomy frequencies.

Thanks to the winter cloudy stuff, often at this time of year I'm unable to collect starlight with my telescopes, but collecting cosmic radio waves through the clouds is no problem with the right radio receiver.

Recently I've been able to catch up with a couple of vintage radio/astronomy related programmes.

Good old YouTube..

This past month has been pretty clouded over, with the odd clear
night allowing some beautiful views of Orion and friends.

Apart from a
few quick glances of Venus through the 60mm refractor, I haven't taken the
telescopes out at all this month!